Maximize the Business Value of Intelligent Automation and Generative AI

Many business leaders look at the challenges ahead—the productivity crisis, continuing inflation, slower economic growth—and instinctively look for ways to defend their position.

But smart leaders see opportunities to invest in overcoming these challenges so their organizations can flourish today and through whatever tomorrow brings. They know that increases in efficiency, productivity, and ability to execute will provide consistent and continuous returns across the enterprise. More and more, those leaders are looking to the proven impact of Intelligent Automation to give their organizations an edge.

The imperative of Intelligent Automation adoption

For those slow to accelerate and scale automation across the enterprise, the risk of falling behind the pack is real and urgent. In fact, McKinsey found that many companies—up to 23% in some industries—expect to spend more than $500 million on automation in the next five years. Our 2023 Automation Now & Next report found that companies are investing an average of $5.6 million in Intelligent Automation in 2023, with 45% also saying they will invest in generative AI-powered automations over the next 12 months.

If you’re not already investing in automation, you’re clearly running out of time. So, as you prepare to invest heavily in automation and related artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI solutions, how can you ensure the money is well spent?

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Top 7 tips for maximizing automation returns

• 1. Engage the business: Align objectives, build awareness, communicate value, and align on the roadmap.
• 2. Understand processes: Use discovery tools, meet process owners, and identify areas for automation.
• 3. Prioritize projects: Qualify opportunities based on value and feasibility, and maximize quick wins.
• 4. Create a measurement framework: Track project performance, measure financial/business impact, and evaluate strategic value.
• 5. Adopt a platform approach: Focus on end-to-end automation and monitor all automations across the enterprise.
• 6. Address governance and risk: Establish a governance model, define roles, and use internal groups to review potential issues.
• 7. Track and reassess: Periodically monitor KPIs and adjust projects based on performance, changing needs, and technical feasibility.

Check out my recent webinar for more tips on maximizing your return on automation and generative AI.

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Choosing the ultimate automation ally

Automation has long been proven to increase productivity and quality, giving workers more time for higher-value tasks while removing them from inefficient manual processes. We’ve seen an average return on investment (ROI) for automation to be 250%. And the benefits are tremendous, like Cargill saving more than $19 million in just five years, Ricoh decreasing operational time by 5,730 days, and Merck saving 150,000 hours annually.

What these enterprises and others have shown is that it’s not just critical to get started with Intelligent Automation; it’s equally important to accelerate automation impact and then scale those automation efforts across the enterprise. And for that you need a trusted, integrated automation partner that will help you:

• Collect and organize ideas at scale.
• Use AI to understand and map the processes to automate.
• Automate across all your applications, customers, and partners.
• Put automation in the hands of every person in your company.
• Scale automation deployments with new AI tools.
• Hyperscale with a community of experts and best practice blueprints.

You'll also want to choose a platform with embedded governance and security, that's architected to deliver fresh innovations throughout the year and is available on-demand. Flexible pricing options that meet the needs of your business will contribute to better returns, too.

A bias for action

Whatever you decide, the worst thing to do is wait. Your competitors are already investing and realizing returns on automations. Get started with the resources available in the Pathfinder Community and dig into our pioneering Intelligent Automation + generative AI solutions. With speed being of the essence, it’s fast and easy to start using Automation Co-Pilot, our AI-powered assistant that lets business users use natural language—and no code!—to automate any generative AI use case in their application of choice.

So what are you waiting for?

Start maximizing your automation returns today

Supercharge your enterprise's journey to automation success with our customized Return on Automation assessment. You'll receive a personalized report, highlighting the top automation and generative AI use cases in your industry, along with a customized analysis of value potential for your business.